The grand finale of the pitch competition will be judged by VCs Bill Tai and Kim Jackson, and founders Lars Rasmussen and Lucy Guo.
Twenty-one of Australia’s most innovative startups will take to the SXSW Sydney stage to pitch their companies next month. Thirteen of them are from NSW, five are based in Victoria, and three are located in Queensland. One Kiwi startup will also be pitching at the October 16 event, and one from the USA.
Many of the startups are applying AI to traditional industries to drive innovation forward. Springboards. AI is one of them, integrating AI into advertising to ‘supercharge creativity.’ Hot on the heels of a Blackbird cash injection, Springboard.AI’s founders Kieran Browne, Amy Tucker and Pip Bingemann will now compete to present their startup at SXSW Austin.
“We’re proud to be repping creative humans in a sea of tech startups,” the company says.
Last year, DermR Health won the Sydney competition for its DermR microneedle skin sample collection patch. Founded by Stefan Mazy in 2022, the dermatology biotech was born out of a family crisis. Mazy’s mother needed two surgeries to remove aggressive cancer from her face. Her son thought there must be a more efficient way to get a biopsy and diagnosis, and began work on a solution. Two years later, the Sydney-based founder was named the winner of the SXSW pitch competition.
It marked the second consecutive year that a medical startup was honoured with the top prize. In 2023, Melbourne biotech NanoCube Health won the pitch competition.
“It takes a village to develop a successful startup, particularly one with a mandate as huge as ours,” NanoCube co-founder Dr Shawn Goussos tells Forbes Australia.
“NanoCube is a targeted treatment; it’s not a new drug. It carries the treatment directly to the tumour and to the cancer cells, not to other organs in the body,” Goussos explains.
The University of Melbourne PhD co-founded NanoCube with his wife Lisa Milano. Together, they are working to transform cancer diagnostics and treatment. Their ‘NanoCube’ technology is first being applied to pancreatic cancer, which kills 7 out of 10 people within one year of diagnosis.
Milano calls their experience winning the 2023 SXSW pitch competition and subsequent trip to SXSW Austin “crazy” and “incredible.”
Continuing biotech’s first prize reign
This year, the Health, Biotech and Medical vertical includes three startups that are vying to continue the winning streak: Elita Genetics – a stem cell bank for pets; Heali – which creates digital treatment plans; and Tepy.ai – a speech headset that reads lip movements.
The health-oriented startups will compete against 18 other nascent innovators in the Climate Tech and Sustainability, Enterprise Big Data and AI, Entertainment Games and Media, Retail and Commerce, Work and Education, and Hardware Manufacturing and Physical Solutions verticals.
The winner of Sydney’s grand finale will go on to pitch in the SXSW Austin or SXSW London competition in 2026.
Applications for the 2025 pitch competition are now closed. The entry criteria specified that the startups must not have raised more than $8 million in funding.
The grand finale will be judged on Thursday, 16 October by Bill Tai, CEO of Kite VC, Kim Jackson, CEO and CIO of Skip Capital, Lars Rasmussen, the co-founder of Google Maps, and Lucy Guo, founder and CEO of Passes.
Startups in the pitch competition
| Climate Tech & Sustainability | |
| Circular Sourcing | A digital platform transforming the global textile trade, connecting businesses to source, sell, and verify textiles seamlessly. |
| Ivygo | A community-powered EV charging network transforming how and where Australians charge electric vehicles. |
| Plante | Compostable horticulture pots made from food waste. |
| Rainstick | Patented Variable Electric Field seed treatment technology helping seed companies achieve sustainable yield increases and improved crop resilience. |
Enterprise, Big Data and Artificial Intelligence | |
| Defectech | A smart asset inspection platform that combines 3D scanning and AI to detect, classify, and report structural defects—faster, more accurately, and at scale. |
| Prefactor | A code-first platform that lets developers define, test, and deploy access logic like real infrastructure. |
| Springboards | An AI-powered platform built to inspire creativity in advertising. |
Entertainment, Games and Media | |
| Choosewise | An interactive streaming platform allowing filmmakers to create interactive films easily. |
| Gradcut | The first-of-its-kind AI-powered platform that delivers personalised graduation video clips instantly, within minutes of the ceremony. |
| Pacify | Building the IP licensing operating system for the creator economy. |
| SemiReal | A no-code platform that allows anyone to create, distribute, and play interactive gamified video content never seen before. |
Future of Retail and Commerce | |
| CLUTCH Glue | CLUTCH Glue is the world’s first and globally patented skin and fabric-safe adhesive designed specifically for fashion, not repurposed from the hardware aisle. |
| Fittora | Fittora is an AI-powered made to measure fashion platform delivering sustainable, tailor-made luxury from a single selfie. |
| Keeyu | Keeyu is building the AI Agent that prevents e-commerce complaints before they happen. |
Future of Work and Education | |
| Aether | Knowledge management and activation platform bringing marketing knowledge to life. |
| Hello Canopy | A reporting platform that empowers employees to speak up safely about workplace concerns like bullying, harassment or cultural issues, and equips HR teams with the data and tools |
| PONND | Next-gen professional networking platform including modular, dynamic identities and intent-led discovery. |
Hardware, Manufacturing and Physical Solutions | |
| Esper Satellites | Building and launching next-gen Earth observation sensors into orbit that can collect chemical data of the Earth from the top of if its atmosphere to the surface |
| Refilled | Smart drink dispensers eliminating single use plastics |
| Sonorus | Developing a low-cost, portable medical device that screens for rheumatic heart disease in minutes. |
Health, Biotech and Medtech | |
| Elita Genetics | Australia’s first stem cell bank for pets. |
| Heali | Transforms clinical instructions into clear, actionable digital treatment plans that patients can actually follow. |
| Tepy.ai | A silent speech headset that reads lip movements to generate real time, synthetic voice for those living with medical voice loss. |
Future of Work and Education –
Should not include Inclura ai but should include:
PONND (NSW) – Next-gen professional networking platform including modular, dynamic identities and intent-led discovery.
Look back on the week that was with hand-picked articles from Australia and around the world. Sign up to the Forbes Australia newsletter here or become a member here.
